Fantastic Four (1961-1998) #36, #38 - #43

I am reading a collection published by Marvel regarding the Origins of the Inhumans.  It starts with issues of the Fantastic Four in which they encounter the Frightful Four, a team composed of the Wizard, who sometimes calls himself the Wingless Wizard, the Sandman, Paste-Pot Pete, who also changed in his name to the Trickster, and, the Inhuman, Medusa.  The series of Fantastic Four issues starting with issue # 36 and running in issues # 38 through # 43 are a confusing jumble of ideas and plot written and drawn by the infamous team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

The Fantastic Four have been one of the core comics around which Marvel has built their Marvel Universe, its villains and guest superheroes have spun off into a number of series themselves.  Like all comics from the beginning era of Marvel, Lee and Kirby incorporated certain themes into their work which form the basis of how we were to read the comics.  These themes are exposed especially in those issues with the Frightful Four, who clearly, Lee intended to be antithesis to the Fantastic Four. 

Superficially, the team reflect an intended similarity.  Each group is composed of four members, three males and one female.  One male in each group is the scientific brains of the operation.  Another one is the brute.  To a certain degree the powers reflect each other, whether be elemental based, flight based, elasticity based.  But, really there seems to be a mirroring of the teams, wherein the reflection is not duplication but rather the transfigured, almost distorted version of the other.

Take for example the clean cut look of the Fantastic Four.  Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm are all clean shaven, with very generic, gentlemanly haircuts.  Sue Storm and Johnny Storm are both blond haired.  Richards has distinguishing white streaks in his hair.  Distinctive too is the dialectic of Ben Grimm, whose language reflects that of New Yorker, and, in particular, the gruff working class slang.  The Fantastic Four in uniform are blue.

On the other hand, the Frightful Four look distinctively foreign, almost Russian in appearance.  None are blond but have dark hair or red hair.  The Wizard and Paste-Pot Pete sport facial hair, specifically, goatees.  The Wizards helmet is stretched tall suggestive of an Eastern Orthodox Miter.  The primary color worn by the Frightful Four is a garish purple, suggestive of the colorfully dark buildings in Russia.

The Fantastic Four function not only as a team but as a family as well with Reed and Sue serving in the paternal and maternal roles and Johnny and Ben in the sibling roles, two brothers who tease each other but at the core love each other.  On the other hand, the Frightful Four represents the dysfunctional family wherein the members’ roles are not clearly defined.  Who is the leader of the group?  Is it the Wizard or Medusa?  Everyone seeks out the love of Medusa to the exclusion of the others in an almost sick Oedipal complex and wherein Medusa does nothing to stop such competition. 

Further, no one on the Frightful Four is secure in their identities.  Both Paste-Pot Pete and the Wizard change their names.  Medusa has been brainwashed and is only a member as a result of the Wizard’s brainwashing device.  The Sandman himself in later issues becomes a more complex character when he battles with shedding his criminal past and using his talents for good.

There is a juxtaposition of residences as well.  While the Fantastic Four reside in the Baxter Building, the Frightful Four appear to live in what could only be described as a gothic manor, reminiscent of the description of the manor in his short story the Fall of the House of Usher, lavish and yet falling down around itself. 

I suspect that Lee and Kirby’s early Fantastic Four tales involving the Frightful Four were an allegory of the cultural competition between the United States and Soviet Russia.  The comic’s themes of space, technology, and family were very much present in the minds of Americans of the 40’s and 50’s.  For Americans, the Red Menace threatened the “American Way of Life,” the kind of life exhibited and represented by the Fantastic Four.  It is no wonder that the sole goal of the Frightful Four was the utter destruction of the Fantastic Four, just as it was perceived that Soviet Russia sought to destroy the cultural United States of the 40’s and 50’s. 

I wonder if the problem that movie studios have had in making a Fantastic Four movie is the fact that the United States is no longer culturally the same as we were in the 40’s and 50’s, that in an odd way, the Fantastic Four are outdated and no longer relevant.